Computer fax systems have become widely adopted in business applications due to the ease with which fax documents can be sent and received from different systems and applications without the need for the sending or receiving user to perform file conversions, since a common file type (G3 Encoded Fax Image Format) is widely accepted as the file format for communication in the T.30 fax protocol. One problem that exists with fax transmissions, however, is that they have a relatively low resolution. In business workflow applications, which may use optical character recognition (OCR) or bar codes to assist in the automated processing of documents, the low resolution of received fax transmissions may result in a higher level of errors when trying to read and interpret the content of the received documents. Images sent as faxes, such as medical images, may be almost impossible to read on the receiving end, thereby making them unusable for diagnostic purposes.
Although one potential solution to this problem is to transmit faxes at higher resolutions, attempting to transmit such faxes over the public switched telephone network (PSTN) results in unacceptably long delivery times.
What is needed, therefore, are improved methods for sending fax transmissions at high resolution without incurring unacceptably long delivery times.